Farm Mania

Ah, the good old time management game! I tend to see a new one of these every week and, more often than not, they don't really tend to add all that much to the formula. However, for some reason I always put myself through the frustration of playing them as increasingly frantic clicking seems to appeal to some depraved part of me. Farm Mania isn't much different, and if you hate time management games then it's probably not worth reading past this paragraph.

Lets get the story out of the way first, although it's really not that important. Your character, Anna, has been tasked with trying to turn her Grandpa's farm around (which reminds me a little of Harvest Moon). Every now and again you'll get a Diner Dash style comic strip that continues the story, but it's not going to win any awards. Anyway, you'll start off with little more than a vegetable patch (apparently Grandpa hasn't been working all that hard) and a few pumpkin seeds. Once planted you can tell Grandpa to get some water for the well and, once collected, you can water each of your crops, sow the soil and, eventually, take them over to the bike for delivery. Once the bike returns you'll get money; which can be used to buy animals, crops, buildings and new equipment at the end of each level. Bear in mind that each level has a time limit, but the speech bubble prompts that tell you to complete each action also have time limits.

Sounds simple, right? Well, it is at first. The key is to pace yourself as you'll eventually be doing so many tasks that you can't really keep up with them. New equipment will mean you can do each actions quicker, or in a larger quantity, but if you try to do too much to quickly earn this money you'll eventually find yourself overwhelmed and lacking in hair. There's a few bonus levels to give you a bit of a breather, and there's also a casual mode if you don't like the level time limits.

It's actually a surprisingly long game, but it can also get pretty hard pretty quickly. It doesn't really try anything new, and if you don't like time management games then you're probably not going to be turned around by this one. Like I said though, you probably haven't even read this far if you don't. For those that have give the demo a try (which gives you 60 minutes of play time) and let me know what you think. Don't blame me if your heart explodes from stress though.

Are time management games actually fun? Or do we just enjoy torturing ourselves? Who knows, but they're strangely addicting.

Download the demo or buy the game here.

Got a game you want me to take a look at? Email me or comment in the comments section!